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WASHINGTON, July 11: What happened to Ahmed
Faraz is a matter of great shame but it should not
have surprised us because from the day Pakistan
was born to the present era of “enlightened moderation”
(Thank you Dr Kissinger), that is exactly the sort
of thing that has been happening to our best and
the brightest.
Writers and artists, except those who sell their
soul to the devil that every ruling order in Pakistan
is, have always been suspect in our country. The
oligarchy that has wielded power from the beginning,
sometimes in civvies, at other times in bemedalled
uniforms, has disliked both ideas and intellectuals.
The ruling class has an intrinsic, if not genetic,
dislike, indeed ill-hidden contempt, for writers,
poets and journalists. In its book, they are lowest
of the low. Some members of this so-called elite
may pretend to have a literary taste but it is utterly
insincere as it has little use either for poetry
or for art or for serious music.
It never fails to amuse me that the very people
who would sway their heads as if they had been transported
to another world when Iqbal Bano sings Faiz’s stirring
lines about how the mighty will one day fall (Hum
dekhain ge/Woh din ke jiska vahda hai) were
the very tyrants whose fall Faiz had so confidently
predicted.
The first victims of official wrath just weeks after
Pakistan’s birth were members of the Progressive
Writers Movement. In the Government’s eyes, the
final seal on their treachery was set when a large
delegation from the Soviet Union came to Lahore
to attend the first major writers’ conference. Anyone
and everyone who was involved with that conference,
whether he was a communist, a fellow traveler or
a mere attendee, was now seen as a “security risk.”
His mail was opened, his movements were tailed by
plainclothesmen, he was blacklisted for employment
under Government and every now and then, when the
usual suspects had to be picked up and put into
jail, he was picked up and put into jail.
They were even blacklisted from appearing on the
radio or freelancing for any official agency. The
old colonial assumption that the greatest danger
to India came from the Soviet Union became the official
credo of independent Pakistan.
Every writer of note – and they were all “progressive”
in one sense or another – was put on the list of
actual or potential enemies of the state. Every
black law that the British had made – to their great
shame, I should add – was not only made part of
the penal code but new laws that gave the state
machinery meta-judicial powers and made nonsense
of the rule of law were promulgated, mostly through
executive decree.
People were picked up under one emergency law or
another. The principal target always remained the
writers and intellectuals of Pakistan. If Ahmed
Faraz has been thrown on the street today, he should
know – and he does know – that he is in august company.
After all, was it not one of his spiritual predecessors,
Hasan Nasir, who was tortured to death in the infamous
Lahore Fort’s chamber of horrors? In passing, it
should be noted that Nawaz Sharif’s one great act
in office was the abolition of that medieval prison
run by the Punjab Police and the country’s despicable
intelligence agencies.
Faiz was hounded till the day he died. What can
be a matter of greater shame to us as a nation and
a state is that a man who inhabits the same immortal
hall of fame as Ghalib and Iqbal was shadowed all
the days of his life because he was viewed an “enemy
of the state.” The Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, in
which Faiz was embroiled, sentenced and imprisoned,
was a lie because all the “conspirators” had really
done was talk about taking over the morally corrupt
and anti-people Government. When they were caught,
the “conspiracy” had long been abandoned. And yet,
during Zia’s time, most of which he spent in exile,
he was detained while in transit through Karachi.
Wherever he went, he was tailed by the regime’s
intelligence.
Habib Jalib remained a suspect. Government after
Government kept him under watch throughout his turbulent
life, spent in conditions of near poverty. In another
country, he would have been celebrated and honored
as a national hero. Here he was disgraced – from
being “found” with illicit liquor to being roughed
up on the streets of Lahore in a Women’s Action
Forum rally (what happened to those magnificent
protesters led by such fearless fighters as Tahira
Mazhar Ali Khan!).
And what about the greatest of Pakistan’s Punjabi
poets, the inimitable Ustad Daman? He was hounded
and watched. Once he was booked on that timeless
Punjab Police specialty: possession of illicit liquor.
One of his poems ends with the couplet: Ais
wastay bolda nahin Daman: Mataan lug jaye meri zubaan
te tax. (Why Daman no longer speaks is for
fear that if he opens his mouth, they will tax his
voice). In Pakistan, every poet who stood for something
and who spoke in the name of the people, found himself
on the wrong side of the law.
Ahmed Faraz is a national treasure and although
he does not believe in the succession system, either
in politics or in poetry, the fact is that if there
is to be a successor to Faiz, it is none other than
Faraz.
This is not the first time Faraz has been persecuted
by the establishment. He was sent home by Maulana
Kausar Niazi, a misstep that was soon rectified.
Faraz lost his job under the Zia regime and he spent
many years in exile in Europe and America, quite
a few of them in London. His great poem Mohasra
(The Siege) remains one of the most powerful indictments
of military rule. Who else but Faraz could have
written: Pesha var qatilo tum sipahi nahin
(You are no soldiers, you professional assassins).
There can be no question that Faraz is also the
greatest romantic Urdu poet of our times. Such a
man should be placed on a pedestal so high that
one should have to crane one’s neck to see him.
But what is the reality of Pakistan?
Some time last year, he and his family were evicted
from their house and the family belongings thrown
on the street. There was a nationwide uproar and
the Government had to eat humble pie. This time
he has been dismissed from his post on the orders
of Shaukat “Shortcut” Aziz, the City Bank’s gift
to Pakistan. This crass and tasteless act is all
Aziz will be remembered by after he returns to where
he came from.
But let me end this by quoting to Faraz one of his
own lines: Dost hota nahin har haath milanay
wala (Not everyone who shakes your hand is
a friend).
The
writer is a regular columnist for Pakistan's weekly
The Friday Times and Washington correspondent of
The Daily Times. E-Mail: khasan2@cox.net |
